Articles You May Have Missed – February 7, 2018

February 7th 2018 - 08:00 AM

For Super Bowl fans, the big game action is over, but broadcast and production crews always want to know how the program feed was accomplished. To showcase the game and halftime production, we highlight the behind-the-scenes technology used to produce Super Bowl LII. A second article describes how one company merged the latest in DECT IP technology with wireless to create a flexible and highly reliable intercom communications system.

The site of Super Bowl LII features a hybrid fiber infrastructure for broadcast crews and 1,300 Wi-Fi access points for fans.

While the crowds were warm inside a domed stadium, perhaps the biggest challenge for the 400-person strong NBC Sports Group crew covering Super Bowl LII on February 4 was Minneapolis’ single-digit weather and record snowfall outside. To counter this, NBC Sports built a heated giant tent covering the entire NEP Broadcast truck compound outside the stadium.

The broadcast was covered by NBC Sports and relied on key production gear from many manufacturers. Broadcast equipment included literally dozens of Sony cameras, Grass Valley Kayenne K-Frame production switchers, Evertz EQX routers, EVS servers and Calrec Apollo digital audio mixing consoles, combined with a complement of NEP Broadcast 4K- and HD-capable production trucks. Trucks used in the broadcast included NEP’s ND1 A, B, C and D (regularly used for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” games during the 2017 season), as well as ND7 A and B rigs. NEP’s Denali truck produced the halftime show.

New product development takes time. This often means that companies appear to be slow in implementing emerging technologies and so lag behind their competitors. In 2017 Riedel Communications became the third of the Big Three intercom manufacturers to introduce a wireless system based on the DECT telecom standard, after RTS launched its ROAMEO at the start of the year and Clear-Com had taken an early lead over both with FreeSpeak II in 2014. But with Bolero, Riedel feels it is doing DECT "properly" and has already sold the product into a number of high profile installations, most notably the 'new' BBC Studioworks Television Centre in London.

Learn how the Riedel Bolero can support up to 100 antennas on a single network. A single Bolero antenna can accommodate ten belt packs. The system uses the latest synchronised Layer 3 IP backbone networks. Read, How Riedel Danced into Wireless DECT with Bolero.

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